Honestly, I am not that big on cookies. Lately, most people have been making them with gooey fruit in the middle or they are crusty and crispy like pastries. My cookies need to be chocolatey and easy to eat without leaving a trail of crunchy combustibles. My “go to” “fake it and bake it” style cookie is Chocolate Chip Devil’s Food cookies. They are super simple to make, unlike my last “fake it and make it” recipe which called for so much prep time making homemade mousse to make a boxed cake look homemade.
1 Devil’s Food Cake Mix
1/2 cup vegetable or canola oil
2 eggs (not hard boiled or Cadbury)
1/2 cup to 3 cups of semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips.
1) First, make sure that you have at least 2 eggs in the fridge. You’ll need vegetable oil too, but you probably bought it 6 months ago and forgot it was there.
1) Go to the store and get a Super Moist Devil’s Foodcake cake mix. This can be any brand that you want to get or is on sale. Then come home.
2) Pour 1/2 cup of vegetable or canola oil in a bowl. Get the eggs out of the fridge. Notice that they are now gone. Someone is home that is not normally home at this time and decided to make themselves scrambled eggs because there were “just two eggs in there and didn’t want to waste them.” Root around in the cupboards for Egg Beaters. Turn up empty. Go back to the store. Get more than two eggs. Trust me, don’t use just one. You will make some pretty mean hockey pucks that way, but they’ll also be a powdery mess.
3) Crack the eggs and put only the contents of 2 eggs in the bowl with the vegetable oil. Make sure the eggs are broken and everything is mixed in evenly.
4) Slowly pour the cake mix in the bowl with the other two things. But actually there are three things because there are 2 eggs. Oh yeah, since they are scrambled up, its just one mass of egg innards. Appetizing, huh? Do this gradually. I made the mistake of plopping the whole thing in there and then mixing it is like mixing cement.
5) Mix contents with a hand mixer, unless you are a really fancy person and have a stand mixer and you put flame decals on it or decalse of a B-52 Bomber on it.
6) Once everything is thoroughly mixed up, portion them out into balls on a cookie sheet. I heard this recipe is supposed to make 24-36 cookies. There is just NO WAY. You are lucky to get 24. I actually only got 20 cookies. Because I ate them. DO NOT eat the raw cookie dough. You can do it with peanut butter cookies but don’t do it with these. It’s runny and soft and has raw eggs in it…unless you buy the pasteurized kind that are for Caesar Salads. Then its okay. But it might feel weird.
7) Bake for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees. The cookies won’t look done, but they are. No hockey pucks, people! Unless you really want them that way.
You want pictures? Sorry. I ate them all. Not all at once. I assure you, it was in moderation.
Here is a very simple recipe that an eight year old should be able to make by themselves. However, because it is so simple, there are many ways for someone who overthinks things, such as myself, to make mush out of it.
There is much flap about mercury in seafood, but in fact, the tuna that is labeled “light” is actually not tuna at all. Occasionally it is yellowfin rather than albacore. At any rate, actual tuna is safer than long lived large fish such as shark and sword fish. It has been found, that if there is risk, the benefits outweigh the possibility. Removing Omega 3 fatty acids provided by oily fish puts a damper on skin and brain health. I know from my own experience that when a lot of fish was removed from my diet due to circumstance rather than conscious choice, skin issues resurfaced. Sure, there are Omega 3 acids in flax oil, but I did not receive nearly the same results.
Hard boil and peel the eggs.
Here’s a recipe from archives, reprinted by popular demand. Halloween is a little more than a month away, but around here, pumpkins are coming up a bit early. I can’t believe how huge some of them are getting. I am just worried that some won’t turn orange because of the cold snap. There may be some you need to harvest early. One thing you can do with leftover pumpkin guts is to make pumpkin muffins.
The original inspiration involved going downtown and spending $7.00 on a slice of very decadent cake. The other half of the inspiration, was a few weeks back, making the Orange Chocolate Torte recipe on the back of a Ghirardelli Ultimate Fudge Brownie mix. It suggested preparing the mix, and adding orange zest. The part of the recipe that intrigued me was actually the idea of using a round pan and how mirror shiny the frosting looked. The idea of making two and stacking them on top of each other entered my consciousness. Of course, they needed to have whipped cream in the middle. The real stuff. That for sure would give me a cake that might be as good as that $7.00 a slice number, but for less.

Okay, back to the show. The two cakes baked on 350 degrees for exactly 38 minute. Actually, I think I left them in for 40, and then worried if they were over baked. No matter. Through the magic of television, both cakes had cooled and had stacked themselves. Whipped cream was even in the middle.
The
My sister was hospitalized for many extended periods of time when she was what is known now as a tween. The best part of it is that there was a Robot at the hospital that would carry medications to the different floors. The nurses at the stations would take the right medicines out of it when it got to their floor. The Robot would ride up and down the elevator all day. My uncle wondered what would happen if he jumped in front of it. The Robot just asked him to move. She was there long enough for us all to have a turn at harrassing the robot. Unfortunately, it didn’t understand if you asked it to bring you a rootbeer or an ice cream sundae. It only dealt in meds and only said about four things.
2 Cups of broken or coarsely chopped pretzels (That is for normal people. My family uses whole mini pretzels)
I used to love getting the tableside “Caesar Salad” making service. At some upscale restaurants, usually Bananas Foster is another dish that is made tableside. You might not expect someone to come to your table and make drinks, however.



